Senator Johnson Talks Politics on CBS Face The Nation

Senator Ron Johnson is pushing back against a tweet from President Trump that threatens a shutdown for the government.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Johnson says that Republicans don’t have the luxury of playing around with funding bills.

“Hopefully most of the appropriations bills will actually be passed. I certainly don’t like playing shutdown politics.”

Trump Tweeted Sunday morning that if Democrats don’t vote for funding his border wall and stricter immigration policies that he would be willing to shutdown the government.

Johnson is hoping that trade issues can also be resolved before a planned bailout of farmers takes place. He’s hoping movement in trade agreements with the EU could be a good start. “My hope is that by calling a truce, by moving forward to completing these deals, we never have to implement that 12 billion dollar program, because that would be a mess.”

The Senator also took some time to defend his positions on Russia after some criticism earlier this month that he deemed to be downplaying efforts by the county’s leadership to destabilize American elections. He says he’d like to see better targeting of sanctions against the economic leaders of the country.

“Let’s target the sanctions so they actually achieve their purpose, which is change their behavior. Get them to pull out of eastern Ukraine. Right now that’s not happening.”